But my first literary love is fantasy: Magic spells, castles, dragons, witches and wizards, curses, long journeys and in the end, good triumphing over evil. I love it all. And while this list can easily describe “Harry Potter,” I will say I loved the genre before I picked up any of J.K. Rowling‘s books.

Now, fantasy sometimes gets a bad rap for its association with books such as the “Lord of the Rings” and series and games such as Dungeons and Dragons. And as in anything where people are known to get together to dress up and act as specific characters from a fictional world (see above), the words “geek,” “nerd” or “dork” are sure to be uttered.

I may look with this wig, but I embraced my inner Hermione for the “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” movie release.

As a bookworm who had a pretty easy time with academics, I’ve been called all those names, but I’ve never taken offense because I was and am proud of who I am. And I too have been known to dress up for midnight releases (left).

Nerds have an unnatural ability to focus and that’s what makes them nerds. It’s not what a nerd likes, like whether it’s ‘Battlestar,’ whatever. That’s all incidental. It’s how a nerd likes those things. And they like them very intensely and very passionately. And they will try to understand something more than any other living creature on the planet. And that’s the power of the nerd. Because you can use that for good.

I have to admit, I totally relate to liking something very intensely and passionately. There’s a reason why the “Harry Potter” in my tag cloud is one of the bigger ones. And this feeling of needing to understand something is completely understandable. Whenever something piques my interest, it becomes my obsession for awhile. I can literally spend hours Googling and YouTubing anything related to the topic — just to learn more.

Admittedly, the stuff I look up and “research” is probably not the most useful, but as Hardwick says, this laser beam-like focus can be used for good such as curing diseases or solving world hunger.

So what’s wrong with that?

Simon Pegg, initially preferred the term geek, but it looks as though he’s embraced “nerd. Again, with the recurring theme of people telling Conan, Pegg says, “It’s another n-word that’s been taken back.”

I agree with Pegg. While nerd used to have negative connotations, the boom in the tech industry is proving that the nerd lifestyle is the way to go as nerds are indeed taking over the world.

I think Alex Dunphy from “Modern Family” said it best. Known as the “smart” (and nerdy) sister between her and Haley, Alex rescues a toy helicopter from some nerdy bullies — the two are not mutually exclusive — for brother Luke and step-uncle Manny, using her feminine wiles. A baffled Haley doesn’t understand and Alex just says:

“You have your fans, I have mine. Someday, your fans are going to work for my fans.”

[…] thing about Comicon is that it has a reputation of being a “nerd haven” as a lot of people go in costume. And this year was no different. Obviously, I had no clue who a lot of the characters were, but I […]